Warzone 2100 Forums

Wikipedia entry on real life examples. In summary, they're a tank chassis with the gun fixed forward instead of in a turret. The reduced weight enables a heavier gun and more armour to be carried for the same road speed, but the whole vehicle has to rotate in order to traverse the gun. They were intended to provide heavy fire support for an infantry attack, sort of like direct-fire artillery, but eventually fell out of favour with the arrival of guided anti-tank missiles.

Perhaps neural synapse technology and the rise of powered armour would make the concept worth revisiting?

Using a howitzer without a sensor and with an attack group is p. much an assault gun.

I had thought about this sorta, like, more specifically a tank destroyer, has all-rounder grade armor and as more damage than a comparable lancer, but a fixed casemate and not a turret.

Having line-of-sight weapons on the sides or very front of droids would possibly give the desired effect, because they wouldn't be able to shoot through the droid thus requiring the droid to generally face at it's enemy.

Kacen wrote:Using a howitzer without a sensor and with an attack group is p. much an assault gun.

I had thought about this sorta, like, more specifically a tank destroyer, has all-rounder grade armor and as more damage than a comparable lancer, but a fixed casemate and not a turret.

Howitzers are a bit of a risky proposition for supporting an infantry advance, given their considerable splash damage, but that's basically the effect I was going for.

Not sure about the best method of actually implementing something like this, though; that would depend on whether turret rotation is determined by the type of turret selected or the vehicle body... In fact, for all I know it's determined by the propulsion system. But the overall effect should be a significant weight saving, enough to cram a Hyper-Velocity Cannon into a light vehicle body without an intolerable peed penalty, at the cost of having to slew the whole vehicle to aim.

And the tank destroyer concept isn't directly connected to assault guns, though both terms mean different things to different people. The term dates back to the days when tanks were originally intended strictly for the support of infantry, and fighting other tanks was for specialised anti-tank tanks, aka the tank destroyer. It didn't work all that well in practice (supposedly it's the reason why the US Army left the Sherman so badly undergunned until the end of the wall) and fell out of favour after the Second World War.

From what I can tell, it seems as if creating such a thing as a fixed-mounted weapon may actually be pretty easy for modders to implement. In weapons.txt, the fireOnMove variable controls whether or not the weapon can be fired while moving (usually, this is "NO" for artillery weapons), while the rotate variable controls how much the turret rotates from the base of the vehicle. (I'd imagine that this would be set to "0" so that the turret wouldn't be able to rotate at all.)

Assault Guns fell from favor for a reason. The firepower of a WW2 system like a StuG III fits into shoulder-launched ordinance like MILAN or PzFst 3-T these days which are fully traversible on the human platform. I really don't see how the synaptic link technology should make the return from well-equip soldiers to more expensive and less sneaky vehicles worthwhile.

Still, Bombard Python Tracks is pretty much an assault gun

Stick just about anything on a small hovercraft and you have an assault gun:

I use a Medium Cannon Cobra Wheels as a tank destroyer in the modern sense; it's probably about equivalent to one of those Strykers fitted out with a 105.